Democrats, the media and their terrorist agenda

America has an avowed policy against negotiating with terrorists, particularly when those terrorists are holding hostages. Or at least that’s what we’re told.

It certainly makes sense politically and militarily. If your enemy knows that all he needs to do is take something of value that you possess, then wait until you give in to his demands, the enemy has won without firing a shot; He owns you.

Why then do the Republicans continue to “reach across the aisle” and negotiate with Democrats while the American public is being held hostage to high unemployment, high gas prices and high taxes? What is it about the mainstream media that makes the Republicans like Charlie Brown agreeing to let Lucy hold the football?

For the last several days Rush Limbaugh has been talking about how the GOP gave into the Democrats on a new continuing resolution, rather than live up to their promise to the American voters to cut $100 billion from the federal budget and further control government spending. Limbaugh, however, has been arguing that the mess America is in hasn’t happened overnight and won’t be cured by a single victory by the Republicans.

Whatever! That’s not the point.

The point, and I’ve been waiting for Rush to articulate this, is that the American taxpayer is being held hostage by Democrats, the media and their shared policies. These terrorists learned back in 1995 that their most successful weapon isn’t one that blows things up or tears flesh, but a boogeyman called “government shutdown.” You could hear it in House Speaker John Boehner’s voice when he promised that he would not shut down the government because the GOP and Democrats could not agree on a new continuing resolution to fund the government for another week or so.

Never mind the fact that when the Democrats controlled all three branches of the government that they never put forth an annual budget for the country; never mind the fact that Americans in large numbers told the Democrats last November to pound sand, never mind the fact that Obama promised to halve the national deficit within his first term, but has instead increased it more in two years than the total deficit amassed in the previous 200-plus years of American history!

This government shutdown boogeyman really has two faces. The other face is the one the GOP wants to believe will smile favorably upon them if they just say the right things. It’s sort of like Charlie Brown agreeing for the umpteenth time to let Lucy hold the football while he tries to kick it. Lucy will never let Charlie Brown kick the football and the media will never truthfully report that Democrat policies are the very reason why America’s actually unemployment is well over 10% and that Obama’s policies are why gasoline prices have surpassed $4 and are likely on their way to $6 by the end of the year.

Like the foreign terrorists who hold American citizens hostage, the media and the Democrats hold the American taxpayer hostage via our elected representatives, who we believed when they said prior to the November 2010 election would seriously cut federal government spending and the overall size of government. When the GOP leadership agreed the other day to avoid a government shutdown by cutting a paltry $38 billion from government spending, some of which had already been agreed to in previous negotiations, it was sort of like the American family deciding that while their expenses are way out of line with their income and the credit cards are all maxed out, to skip Starbucks once a week when the real solution to their overspending will require much more drastic cuts and a serious attitude adjustment.

 

Hannity part 5 of 5

Hannity part 4 of 5

Hannity part 3 of 5

Hannity part 2 of 5

Thank you Sean Hannity Part 1 of 5

Fox News and the Sean Hannity show definitely put the Central Valley of California on the map with this show. Share it with your friends; talk about it around the water cooler then contact your elected representative and tell them that this kind of egregious behavior on the behalf of the federal government WILL NOT STAND.

Our livelihoods and our national sovereignty are at stake.

Committing econnomic suicide

While I’ve not really followed the whole Glenn Beck fiasco — apparently some advertisers have pulled their ads from his national talk radio program for something he apparently said — the idea that businesses in this age of economic recession are reducing ANY of their advertising is economic suicide!

During the Great Depression the two biggest cereal companies, Post and Kellogg’s, competed for market share. Post severely cut back its advertising while Kellogg’s pressed on. Years later when America’s economy picked up, Kellogg’s was positioned to succeed by beating out Post for market share. This market share superiority continues today.

In today’s marketplace, pulling advertising from national Conservative talk radio shows is especially detrimental because of the large listener base that Conservative talk radio provides.

People today are smart enough to know why certain companies are doing this. While this news might provide a bit of free advertising for some of these companies, consumers will ultimately vote with their wallets and find other companies to spend their money on.

If I were a company competing against those that have made it known that they’re pulling their advertising from some of these programs I’d be jumping for joy and would be lining up to fill the space they vacated. The chance to promote my goods and services on Conservative talk radio would be most welcome, particularly if my competition is electing to spend their money on less-effective media.

Wishful thinking

The LA Times on Sunday (today) carries a story under the hopeful banner that conservative talk radio in California is waning.

While the article cites anecdotal evidence such as staff cuts to local on-air talk show hosts at several talk radio stations in California it makes no concrete mention of ratings or the factors that drove these decisions. Certainly if conservative talk radio was tanking financially as fast as the short-lived Liberal talk network Air America the Times would have a better story to report. This piece, however, can’t even cite ratings figures at the various conservative talk show stations in California, or even quote some radio station managers as saying that their listeners were simply not tuning into the conservative talk programs anymore.

Local conservative talk show host Inga Barks, who can be heard on Fresno’s KMJ 580, and Bakersfield’s KERN 1180, was quoted in the story, but even her comments did little to help support Times reporter Michael Finnegan’s thesis that Californians are tuning out when it comes to conservative talk radio.

The story reports that the talk stations that have fired on-air staff replaced those folks with syndicated programs, but failed to mention with what programs the stations replaced the local programs. Locally speaking there’s been no recent changes to the formatting at the valley’s popular talk show station, KMJ 580. In fact, the station recently made some formatting changes that increased local coverage, which at the time was reported as something that local listeners very much wanted. I have no inside-information to elaborate on this point, other than to surmise that KMJ’s changes have been met with positive feedback, both by listeners and advertisers.

Reports out recently indicate that the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh program has in fact picked up listeners. Limbaugh himself reported the other day that his advertising revenue during the first-quarter of this year was up double digits over the same period last year. While Limbaugh likes to joke about his “obscene profit center breaks” (commercials), the fact of the matter remains that Limbaugh gives his growing audience something they want and something they’re even willing to pay extra to receive, as evidenced by those willing to pay extra to receive his entire show via podcast. The net result is an apparent growing list of sponsors willing to pay sufficiently to have their goods and services marketed on the program.

Chalk up the LA Times’ latest piece to nothing more than wishful thinking and a push by mainstream media to marginalize a powerful medium that is more reflective of the average American than is represented by the major television networks and newspapers.

As an industry, American Media is waning because it can’t hold onto its customers (its readers and viewers). Newspapers in particular have sunk in significance not because of the Internet, but because they’ve failed to deliver a product worthy of their readers. Network news has also sunk in significance for much the same reason. In both cases it’s safe to argue that mainstream media’s dumbing down of its products has turned off viewers and readers, while conservative talk radio has done the opposite by working to educate a more intelligent audience.

Resurrecting the American Newspaper

Okay, so maybe the local newspaper (generally speaking) hasn’t succumbed to a coroner’s report yet, but the reports of their death may not be as exaggerated as those that led Mark Twain to send his famous cable to the Associated Press in 1897.

Is the local American newspaper really a dying industry? While in Monte Python speak it may not be dead yet, but it’s certainly on life support. How else do you explain the layoffs by some of the country’s biggest newspaper chains, and reports on the trade blogs that the competition for reporter jobs is tight?

The rise of “new media” via the Internet may be to blame, but I don’t buy it. Not completely. I think the death of the local newspaper is due in large part to the management style to write to the lowest common denominator and the antiquated position among the elite reporters and editors that remains: “the news is what I tell you it is!”

Nevermind the purported bias that people claim print media has; a stronger indictment may be that the local newspaper doesn’t write to a level that makes people think and truly educates their audience. Maybe it’s due also to the fact that many newspapers still pay abysmally low salaries to their reporters (some still at or around $20,000 a year) and don’t demand a higher standard of writing from the people they do hire. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

I wish it weren’t so. There’s still a place for the local newspaper. While we may be out of the habit of sitting down to the newspaper anymore, it’s still one of those exercises that not only has the power to educate and inform, but the added benefit of allowing the reader to sit and relax after a day at the office. Shut off the television and climb behind the newspaper and there’s something a bit sentimental and relaxing that happens. Sure you can get the same news and more online, but you can’t sit back in the easy chair and fold open your computer. Even with a laptop, it’s not physically as comfortable as cracking open the newsprint and reading.

Talk Radio
The news in general certainly isn’t dead. Look at the success of conservative talk radio for a moment. Put aside the obvious conservative bias of programs like the Rush Limbaugh show — Limbaugh’s success continues to grow because Limbaugh continues to give people something they value. And while it’s much easier to consume talk radio in our mobile society than it is print media, there’s something that talk radio gives its audience that newspapers apparently refuse to provide.

As one who worked in print newsrooms for 13 years I saw it off and on for much of that time. Dissatisfied readers would call in and were essentially told by editors that they didn’t know what they were talking about when they voiced complaints about the news. The old “shut up, I’ll tell you what the news is…” is not fiction.

Arguably, Limbaugh gives people something they aren’t getting from print media, but could very easily get if print media managers made it a high priority.

In short, Limbaugh does not talk down to his audience like newspapers talk to their readers. In general, conservative talk radio takes the conversation to a higher level of intellect. Granted, there are those who yell and belittle callers with opposing opinions. And while some of those callers are arguably as clueless as many newspaper editors are, there’s a general level of condescension not found in talk radio that’s found in newspapers.

Newspapers still write to the Fifth Grade level because that’s what journalism schools teach, and because editorial management won’t challenge that notion. I also think newspapers are dying because publishers are the proverbial tail that wags the editorial dog.

Look again at Limbaugh, for example. He offers listeners a program and editorial format that they want. The programming format and content of the program are primary. It’s what draws listeners to the show. It’s those listeners coming in large numbers that attracts advertisers — not the ability of a sales staff to convince advertisers to buy, then filling the editorial space with whatever you can find. That backwards way of thinking and operating is what’s got newspapers in the financial pinch that they’re in today.

As Limbaugh’s audience grows he can show advertisers the value of soliciting from his program. Newspapers could take the same blueprint and focus not on trying to please advertisers, but on pleasing readers. If you please the reader, and eventually grow that reader base, you now have an attractive product for advertisers to reach those readers. Limbaugh does that in the radio realm and he’s now very rich. I did it with a small newspaper published by a non-profit organization and grew the advertising base because I gave readers a product they valued. By improving the editorial content of the newspaper first (I also made some changes graphically as well), I not only increased the readership of the organization’s members who already got the newspaper as part of their membership, I increased the reach of the newspaper as word of the organization’s influence in the community spread and more people wanted the newspaper. This helped grow membership in the organization, which boosted circulation. In turn, those businesses seeking to target our members saw a greater value in the product and were more inclined to sign advertising contracts with us.

The concept is simple, but the solution is going to require retooling some newsrooms and finding people with a different mindset that can follow this blueprint. It’s going to take some work, but it can be done. While technology continues to grow past what newspapers have traditionally offered, I’d like to think that with some creative thinking we could give people what they want and can use. The American newspaper can remain a viable part of the American fabric, but it must first give people something they can’t wait to pick up. Some newspapers still do that, but it tends to be the smaller community weeklies that investors aren’t clamoring to buy.